Lawn. Off.

The Telegraph today has a story carrying the headline:

Chinese farmer declares war on property developers with homemade wheelbarrow cannon

Also:

In May he held off 100 people by firing from a makeshift watchtower.

I love this man. He is my new god.

Fixing a Slow Finder in Snow Leopard

I don't know if anyone else in the world will have this problem, but if your Finder is running slowly (and running at 90% CPU usage) after an upgrade to Snow Leopard, delete com.apple.finder.plist in your user Library folder, and it should return to normal.

Why mine did this, I'll never know, but using the old MacOS 9 adage of "delete the preferences" seemed to work here.

The whole computer seemed to be running slower with Snow Leopard, and because iStat doesn't work with 10.6 yet, I didn't immediately know what was going on. On further inspection of the Activity Monitor, Finder was using 90% of the CPU, so there was something going very wrong there. Deleting this file fixed it.

Health Insurance Mandate Unconstitutional?

Possibly. But it hasn't stopped this government lately.

Shop to Earn is a Scam

A very nice, credulous person just asked me if they should join "Shop to Earn" or "Shop to Earth."

Don't join it. It's a multi-level-marketing scheme (MLM). The promised rebates are up to 70%, but most of the rebates are in the 2-4% range, which you can easily get for free through ebates.com or dozens of other places on the internet.

If we generously assume a 5% rebate on everything you buy (which is highly optimistic, since you'll probably get substantially less than 5% on average) you would have to spend $9,000 online in order to break even. On top of that, you have to pay a $69 yearly membership fee. So after you spend $9,000 online in year one, you'll have to spend $1,380 online every year thereafter to break even, and you have to do all of your shopping through their website for the products that they carry in order to do so. So that's a 24 month, minimum $10,380 commitment you're making by signing up and paying $450. And, of course, $1,380 every year in perpetuity.

As with all MLMs, the only way to have a shot at making your money back or making a profit is by recruiting others to buy in to the scheme. When you recruit someone else, you get a cut of their initiation fee.

It's a pyramid scheme, and you'd be throwing your money away by getting involved in it. The only people who profit are the ones who started it. Everyone else just has to play catch-up forever, or get bilked out of their initiation fee.

Use ebates.com instead.

The Apathetic Army

New Bipartisanism, Same as the Old

Matt Welch:

The other factor at play here, which Democratic ears seem unable to detect, is that Obama is skillfully turning the meaning of the word "bipartisan" into "the coalition that agrees with my magnanimous self."

That's all that bipartisanism is: "I'm on this side, you're on that side, and you've finally found the wisdom to agree with me."

When you think about it, though, if the Republicans weren't going to oppose $500 billion in new spending, what were they going to oppose?

My Inauguration Experience (or, The Most Poorly-Organized Event in History)

Let me tell you a little about the Hell we went through today at the Inauguration... and as you'll see from the links below, I was one of the lucky ones, no thanks to this damn government's complete incompetence at every level.

We thought that standing in line for 150 minutes outside the Cannon House Office Building (where we were picking up some of our Inauguration tickets) on Monday would be a sufficient appetizer for the enormity of the unavoidable crowd chaos on Tuesday, but we were so, so wrong. The way the tickets were divvied up was by color-coded section. There was a purple section, a yellow section, an orange section, a blue section, and a silver section. There may have been one or two other colors that I'm not remembering. Our five tickets originally consisted of two purples and three silvers. Purple was much better than silver, so we thought that we might be able to somehow trade up to five purples, or failing that, trade down to five silvers. We ended up doing the latter, trading the two purples in exchange for two silvers and some cash, which significantly helped offset our trip costs. Trading away the better tickets turned out to be a really lucky break.

Getting to and attending the ceremony really wasn't all that bad. Not great, but not terrible, at least for us. This morning, we left at 6am, knowing that people would start lining up at 4am, but being unwilling to wake up at 3:30 after being out until 1:30 at the South Carolina Ball at the Air and Space Museum. As expected, it took quite a bit longer than normal to make the 1.5 mile walk from our apartment on Massacheusetts & 13th to Capitol Hill, because of all of the random road closures. They'd changed many of the gate entrances without notice 48 hours prior, so there was a lot of confusion there - an indication of the negligence to come later in the day.

The 35 minute walk took about 70 minutes, and the foot traffic increased geometrically as we approached the Capitol. We hit a wall of people about 1/4 mile from the Silver entrance gate. After another 90 minutes of standing around waiting, the gate opened, and the soldiers inexplicably let randomly sized clumps of people in to to the security line at random intervals, to no apparent effect. The crowd (the tightest mob I'd ever been in up until that morning) was getting angry, and reasonably so, from looking at relatively empty security checkpoints and not being allowed to enter.

After another 45 minutes of being crushed in the mob outside the gate, we finally got to go through the security checkpoint, which was a joke. They just had you flash your ticket, open your coat, and waved you through. Security theatre, if you ask me - even more useless than the airport. At least it was fast. Then we hit mob #2: inside the Mall.

As with outside the event venue, there was absolutely no traffic direction inside the Mall either. Actually, at one point, we did get stopped to wait 10 minutes for a single police motorcycle to drive by. We picked out a spot in the Silver section that we thought would work, then saw some people flowing forward beyond the Silver section: the mob had overrrun the plastic temporary fencing cordoning off the sections, so we took the opportunity to get 600 feet closer.

So far, so good: a little irritating, but not too bad considering that there were 2 million people there.

The ceremony itself was really good: Some great performances, a fantastic speech, and John Roberts even flubbed the Oath of Office. Getting out, though, was to be a truly awful experience.

We watched the ceremony from in front of the Capitol reflecting pool, closer to the Northern side of the Mall than the Southern.


Unfortunately, because they closed Constitution Ave. for the parade later in the day, the only way we could exit was about a half mile backward and to the South - and then it got really bad. You can follow our eventual route here: http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=2505093

We exited the Mall at 4th and Independence and immediately started looking for a place to cross the Mall back North to head home, but the police/secret service completely closed both Constituion Ave and Pennsylvania Ave. We heard that the Eastern route that we used to arrive at the event was closed, so we headed West, expecting to be able to get across the Mall *somewhere*. At every major intersection, we asked the soldiers/volunteers/police/etc if we could cross over there. They said "no." "Do you know where we could?" "No clue. We thought 14th street would be open, but it looks like they closed that too."

There was no communication between any of the "authorities" at this event - NONE. No one knew anything. There were no directions, no signage, no information whatsoever.

We walked West on Independence Ave. along with a few hundred thousand others, and hit a major logjam at just about every intersection. We had to literally force ourselves through HARD - it was like the Taste of Chicago, but many times more dense. None of us have even been so squished or crushed in our lives. You couldn't even move your arms for many minutes at a time - and this was while "walking" home.

At 12th and International, we hit a particularly bad logjam. No one was moving anywhere. We tried to ford through as with the previous jams, but ended up getting nowhere. Rachel's custom-made "Llamas for Obama" hat was stolen right off her head. Asking the police anything turned out to be a huge mistake, because they actually didn't want us to move anywhere, at all - just stand there. As it turned out, the city transportation authority decided to close the Smithsonian Metro (subway) station there at the last minute, and the crowd was PISSED, because there wasn't really anywhere else to go, since they'd closed off the Mall, and the closest subway stops were pretty far away. We learned after getting home that 200 National Guard troops had to be called in minutes after we made it out to prevent a riot. Frankly, these idiots deserved a riot for creating this mess.

The only way we got through this throng was by Rachel lying to the police that she lost her father somewhere in the crowd and had to find him.

We broke out of the mob, took the path of least resistance down 12th, and made our way to 14th via C street - our next hope of crossing over.

No hope. We'd been walking for quite a while now, (on top of standing for hours at the event and before) and were sore to say the least.

Then 15th street - also no. We asked the Army guys if we could cross. "No." "Know where we can?" "No idea. You could try heading back East." No way.

The military guys were really nice, but it was at this point that Iraq and Katrina really started to make sense: These people can't coordinate. There was no radio contact, between anyone, because no one had radios. This wasn't the grunts' fault, it was whoever was in charge, who was apparently no one.

Walking further to 17th street, it looked like we finally had a chance to cross over. Actually, 17th was technically closed too, but everyone was so fed up that we just walked through every unprotected space we could to get somewhere. Blockade after blockade, we finally found ourselves slowing to a stop at 19th and E.

More army guys just stopped everyone cold for no apparent reason. We saw other people walking ahead of us in all directions, but we had to stand there for some reason, with no explanation. After about 10 minutes of pointless waiting, an enormous caravan of empty tour buses start rolling through very, very slowly. Whenever there was a break in the line (meaning a several-minute long gap between the buses) we tried to cross, but they wouldn't let us - we stood there looking at an empty street with the Army blocking our path. The mob of several thousand started yelling, chanting, anything to express that we were REALLY tired of this, and the buses weren't moving anyway.

Then the Army told us to turn around and keep heading West to 20th/21st. NO. We were screaming at them, ready to push them over. Finally, they just gave up and let us through, and we had our first indication of hopeful progress in the general direction of our apartment. It had been hours since we could feel our toes, fingers, noses or legs, our feet were screaming to stop, we were incredibly dehydrated, but all we wanted was to end this ordeal. The empty tour buses, incidentally, turned out to be the tour buses for the bands in the parade, just repositioning somewhere else. Vitally important.

45 minutes later, we finally made it back. The trip which under far-from-ideal conditions would have taken 35 minutes total ended up being around 3.5 hours.

Reading the news after we got back, we learned that it had been far worse for others. Thousands of Purple and Blue ticket holders (the tickets we sold/trade for the lesser Silvers) got stuck in a tunnel for hours, and missed the event completely. They traveled from all over the country at great expense to witness this historical moment, and they got stuck in a tunnel because the "authorities" never opened up one of the Purple gates. At least we got to see it. We were close enough to see Obama and the rest out on the stage, and really feel the majesty of the show and occasion. The Purple people had to sit in a blocked tunnel and miss the whole thing.

So here's the lesson: The government cannot organize anything. Having been through this ordeal today, it makes sense that if they can't even do Rose Bowl-level crowd control (Pasadena has done it every year for decades) then stabilizing Iraq and responding to Hurricane Katrina were completely beyond their abilities. The fact that they "organized" an event in their own back yard by cutting the city in half and not allowing crowds to cross from one half to another demonstrates that they're completely incompetent, and can't handle anything beyond setting up meaningless security checkpoints.

Below are some links to other people's ordeals - it's enough to make you see red.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2009/01/scenes-from-t-2.html

http://www.heraldnet.com/article/20090120/NEWS01/901209974&news01ad=1

Purple tunnel of doom:

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2009/01/crush_of_humanity_ii.php

http://lynch.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/01/20/the_tunnel

http://www.facebook.com/wall.php?id=61444130820

Asymmetry and Randomness: Old Weapon and New Tool

The American Revolutionary War was fought and won using the guerilla tactics that evolved into today's terrorist methods. It was called an asymmetric war not only because of the great difference in size between the two militaries, but also because the tactics of the two sides necessarily differed greatly as well: Britain's large, well-armed military could march straight through a region and take it by force, while the Colonists used their small numbers, greater responsiveness and geographic incumbency to their advantage.

The smaller army often has more options available to it, as its incohate state allows it to be more protean in shape and function. It wasn't the British who were hiding in trees and ambushing the colonists in the hills of Massacheusetts, nor was it the Unified Task Force who were sniping at columns of warlords driving through the streets of Mogadishu. This institutional rigidity is a result of the need to organize a huge enterprise such as an established military. It becomes divided into specialized forces for specific tasks, and it becomes inflexible as a result.

During the Soviet-Afghan war, the United States was able to use the size and financial burden of the Soviet military against Russia itself. Once the Afghans were armed with FIM-92 Stinger Missiles, they were able to use the small, mobile, inexpensive weapon to take out large, expensive aircraft. It was soon discovered that one missile which cost the US $70k could drop a Soviet aircraft worth $20 million, and did so on 7 out of 10 launches. Based on this data, every dollar the US spent on the war cost Russia $200, which spelled an unwinnable war for the Russians absent a disruptive new tactic or technology. This demonstrates the clear advantage of being on the guerrilla side of an asymmetrical war against a large traditional military, and how important it is for large armies to develop their own strategic asymmetry to render moot the enemy's natural guerrilla advantage

Today's ongoing conflict on the Afghan-Pakistan border affords clearly defined advantages to all sides involved: the equipment, resources and manpower of the larger militaries and their specialized forces vs the stealth, agility and small numbers of the terrorists. Because of the sheer size of the American forces in Afghanistan, the terrorists will always know where their enemy is at any moment, and where to hide. The war becomes a stalemate unless the American force can either play the guerrilla game better than the terrorists, or use their existing assets to an asymmetrically disruptive strategic advantage, which brings me to the point of this post.

Because of our vast intel advantage, we know that bin Laden is hiding in a hole somewhere in Northern Waziristan, and his set of possible location points is limited by that boundary. He can move fast, but not far, and thus al Quaeda's central organizing force is limited by these same constraints. The US and its allies can move very fast, very far through the air, but are limited to known targets, which is exactly how the structurally inferior enemy has been able to elude them. In this case, a disruptive tactic is available that neither side has yet employed, and that is the property of randomness.

If a target's location is limited by an absolute set of geographic boundaries, then ideally one could wage war completely and totally on the complete area within those boundaries. Unfortunately, that is simply not possible in an area of 5,000 square miles. A well-equipped military can, however, achieve that same effect through randomness: by randomly targeting areas for bombing anywhere and everywhere within that region, the rules of play for the guerrillas are not only changed, they are eliminated completely.

They can no longer predict where the Americans will be at any moment, because the Americans are no longer chasing them, and their source of intelligence disappears completely. Their set of known possible hiding places is likewise nullified, because their enemy's strategy no longer accommodates those hiding places. Complete randomness in this case tips the advantage to the military with air capability, and it becomes a matter of time before bin Laden is killed or attempts escape through unfriendly territory.

Randomness, then, is the asymmetrical weapon that the Americans can use to frustrate and ultimately eliminate terrorists hiding in the unkind terrain of the Afghan-Pakistani border.

We should randomly bomb Northern Waziristan.

The Traitors

All of the Senators who voted *for* retroactive telecom immunity:

Alexander (R-TN)
Allard (R-CO)
Barrasso (R-WY)
Bayh (D-IN)
Bennett (R-UT)
Bond (R-MO)
Brownback (R-KS)
Bunning (R-KY)
Burr (R-NC)
Carper (D-DE)
Chambliss (R-GA)
Coburn (R-OK)
Cochran (R-MS)
Coleman (R-MN)
Collins (R-ME)
Conrad (D-ND)
Corker (R-TN)
Cornyn (R-TX)
Craig (R-ID)
Crapo (R-ID)
DeMint (R-SC)
Dole (R-NC)
Domenici (R-NM)
Ensign (R-NV)
Enzi (R-WY)
Feinstein (D-CA)
Graham (R-SC)
Grassley (R-IA)
Gregg (R-NH)
Hagel (R-NE)
Hatch (R-UT)
Hutchison (R-TX)
Inhofe (R-OK)
Inouye (D-HI)
Isakson (R-GA)
Johnson (D-SD)
Kohl (D-WI)
Kyl (R-AZ)
Landrieu (D-LA)
Lieberman (ID-CT)
Lincoln (D-AR)
Lugar (R-IN)
Martinez (R-FL)
McCaskill (D-MO)
McConnell (R-KY)
Mikulski (D-MD)
Murkowski (R-AK)
Nelson (D-FL)
Nelson (D-NE)
Pryor (D-AR)
Roberts (R-KS)
Rockefeller (D-WV)
Salazar (D-CO)
Sessions (R-AL)
Shelby (R-AL)
Smith (R-OR)
Snowe (R-ME)
Specter (R-PA)
Stevens (R-AK)
Sununu (R-NH)
Thune (R-SD)
Vitter (R-LA)
Voinovich (R-OH)
Warner (R-VA)
Webb (D-VA)
Wicker (R-MS)

Our forefathers would have seized power from these tyrants (or, at least, enablers of tyranny). We, of course, are either too apathetic or pusillanimous to do so.

2nd Amendment Ruling

That is all.

Amend the California Constitution

So a bunch of Godly bigots want to change California's constitution in order to deny protected rights to a minority. In and of itself, that's stupid, but what's just as stupid is that the California Constitution can be amended by a simple majority - >50%. Therefore, there needs to be a concurrent ballot initiative to amend the California Constitution such that a 60% majority is needed to amend the California constitution, effective immediately.

Having been through several ballot initiatives at the state and local levels myself in several states and locales, I can tell you that the most common tactic to get these things rammed through the system (especially when opposition is running at only 35%, as the proposed CA initiative banning gay rights is) is simply to put it up for consideration over and over every election (especially in the off-peak elections, because of low turnout) until it gets passed. Raising the bar to 60% (or more) would definitely make that much more difficult to accomplish. And frankly, shouldn't it take more than a simple majority to do something as serious as amend the Constitution? It certainly does at the national level.

Get some signatures.

The Difference Between Clinton and Obama

Here's an interesting article on Clinton's female supporters in the wane of her candidacy. There's one paragraph in particular that really resonates with me, and for me distills the difference between her and Obama:

"Mrs. Clinton's campaign, many women say with regret, did not inspire a deep or nuanced conversation between men and women, only familiar gender-war battles consisting of male gibes and her supporters' angry responses. Mr. Obama, who sought to minimize the role of race in his candidacy, led something of a national dialogue about it, but Mrs. Clinton, who made womanhood an explicit part of her run, seemed unwilling or unable to talk candidly about gender."

That appears to be how they differ on every issue, not just on race/gender. Where Obama speaks sincerely in tones of dialogue and collaboration, Clinton has (even moreso recently) taken an "us and them" trench warfare attitude, apparently trying to pick up where Edwards's campaign left off. With the uneducated and the boomer-generation culture warriors, it's worked. With the educated and the youth who are the future of this country, it's felt hollow.

I respect him for that, and I don't respect her for the same reason, and it takes a lot for me to say that about a Democrat who's promised to raise capital gains taxes. Maybe I'll vote for him in November... at this point, it's either him or vote for no one. (As much as I believe in the Libertarian ideal, I can't vote for someone with Bob Barr's past.) But when I see Obama speak on CNN, be it in a canned speech, or in an interview, I can't help but think that that voice is the future this nation needs. My choice now is whether to take the bad with the good and actually give him my vote.

But I live in California, so it doesn't really matter anyway.

Do I live in Russia? Only when I leave the house.

I'm at the Apple store... waiting... in another line... just like every other day of my life...

The DVD burner on my new MacBook Pro has been acting up, and I can't deliver the promised Rugby World Cup matches without being able to burn them. So to the Apple store I go, thinking, stupidly, that they would be able to replace the drive without a problem. After an hour of being here, I can't even get as far as getting in line to see someone.

As with the DMV, the Passport agency, Berkeley Bowl, the county courthouse, and it seems every other enterprise that deals with any substantial number of people, at the Apple store you have to stand in line for a chance to stand in line. In this case, I have to stand in line, to register for the standby list, which will then possibly, maybe get me on the real list to be serviced. WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON IN THIS COUNTRY???

These breadlines used to be phenomena limited to old Russia. Remember? We used to relish in the schadenfreude of lesser nations dealing with their unwashed masses. Now, these processing lines are everywhere - gradually getting us used to being treated like commodities, willfully accepting a complete lack of service that one deserves as a customer.

The Bay Street Apple store just moved from another location in the same strip mall. From what I can tell, the only difference is that this one is smaller: combining the Genius bar and checkout desk into one great, huddled, irritating mess. I'm on the standby list now, but that doesn't guarantee that I will get service on something that's broken on my computer and covered by the warranty that I paid extra to have. GOD!

This change toward treating everyone as a barcode completely unworthy of any sort of personal respect isn't limited to the Apple store, of course. The TSA and airline industry are probably the worst offenders in this sense.

In order to make baby boomer moms and children of hippies feel safe and cared for, now we have to wait up to two hours in a "security" line at the airport, where they don't even catch the big stuff (knives, guns, etc.) but make sure to strip search you, because you, whitebread middle-America, could be dangerous. It's security theater, plain and simple, made to a) scare you into thinking that there is an immediate threat to your safety, and b) reassure you that in the hands of your capable government, you are safe, or at least, they're doing their best to keep you safe.

The insult continues once you're on the plane. The seats have gotten narrower, the passengers have gotten louder and you don't even get a meal anymore on most flights. Unless you pay for wider seats, or for quieter passengers, or for a meal, which you do if you fly business or first class.

These things are not extras on a flight - just charge more for economy class and give me a pleasant flight. A comfortable seat is a requirement for a pleasant flight. Eating something decent is too. Paying your flight attendants a pension so that I don't have to deal with their unbridled bitchiness is also a requirement for my enjoyment and continued business.

But every airline is trying to be a cut-rate carrier like Southwest. News: they can't do it. Southwest can get away with shitty service and no food and overcrowded cabins because they are charging less than the legacy carriers used to.

But if I get a ticket on United, I expect a quiet cabin, a comfortable seat, some food and a courteous flight crew. I know I'm not alone in saying that I'd gladly pay what flights used to cost in 1995 to get the same level of service that I got in 1995. If I wanted crappy service at a cheap price, I would have gone to Southwest. But I didn't - I came to United because I wanted a pleasant flight, and I'm willing to pay for that. Just don't treat things that are necessary as extras. We like those things, we need those things. That's why Frontier and Southwest are blowing you out of the water - they're starting to give us those "extras," and are charging less than you for it.

I'll rant more about it in a future post - but everything's getting crappy and expensive, and everyone wants to take you for a ride. It is like living in Russia. Long breadlines, poor customer service, and every merchant wants to sell you something that doesn't work, and then make you wait around to charge you to fix it poorly.

All I can do is hope that the Apple store will see the customer reaming them out on their own computer as worthy enough to warrant doing their job.

I Blame Global Warming for Illegal Mexican Immigration

The National Parks Services of both the United States and Canada are in the process of organizing migration corridors in response to climate change, which makes perfect sense. As localized climates change by seemingly small magnitudes - as small as fractions of a degree - the geographic ranges of flowers, trees, animals and even rivers and lakes will change with them. So migration corridors have been set up for bighorn sheep herds, porcupine caribou herds, wild bison, all sorts of raptors, etc. etc.

In fact, it only takes one degree to drastically affect an area's biota. Colder species move out, warmer species move in. Currents in rivers where the water is warmer or cooler by as little as one or two degrees make for entirely separate, and seemingly incompatible, ecosystems living next to each other.

It makes sense, then, that National Parks are cooperating across borders to ensure the safe travel of animals from one location to a settlement in another. Could the current American emphasis on amnesty be another one of these cooperative programs?

We spent a lot of time on the important and sensitive issue of migration. [...] I say important because a good migration law will help both economies and will help the security of both countries.

-- Pres. Bush, March 14, 2007, in Merida, Mexico.

Of course! The U.S. Government is only trying to ensure the survival of a threatened herd: the Mexican Wage Laborer. Through cooperation with the Mexican Government and local law enforcement, the U.S. has managed to establish a safe and inviting refuge for this threatened population as it flees rising temperatures in the South.